1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates broadly to holders for removably holding sheet material such as a paper document. More particularly, this invention relates to an extruded plastic note holder which can be mounted on a surface such as the side of a computer monitor.
2. State of the Art
U.S. Pat. No. 2,530,821, issued to Hubbell in 1950, discloses a “Bulletin Sheet Holder and Support”. The holder/support consists of a generally U-shaped rigid member and a semi-rigid (rubber) “blade” which extends from one wall of the U-shaped member to the other wall. A piece of paper is inserted between the free end of the blade and the adjacent wall of the rigid member.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,105,127, issued to Höll in 1978, discloses a “Holder Bar for Sheet-like Articles”. The holder consists of a rectangular tube with a slot in one side wall. An inner omega-shaped clamp is disposed inside the tube with the open end of the clamp adjacent to the slot in the tube, A piece of paper inserted through the slot is engaged by the clamp,
Both of the above-described patents require the manual assembly of multiple components. U.S. Pat. No. 4,629,075, issued to Hutten in 1986, discloses a “Mounting Strip”. It consists of an elongated U-shaped, rigid plastic channel having a forward leg forming a bearing surface and a rearward leg forming a mounting surface. An elongated flexible gripper tongue is formed along the mounting surface of the channel and includes a clamping surface adapted to engage the bearing surface of the forward leg of the channel for receiving and clamping an article such as sheet material there between. The rigid plastic channel and flexible plastic gripper tongue are preferably co-extruded in a single operation to form a one-piece mounting strip having cooperating clamping elements with different durometer hardness. Hutten's mounting strip is more economical to manufacture compared to prior clamping devices described above because the channel and gripper tongue, having dual-durometer hardness, are integrally formed as a single co-extrusion. This eliminates the separate manufacturing operations required to fabricate the housing and clamping elements of prior art devices, as well as the additional step needed in such prior art devices to assemble the housing and clamping element.
While the Hutten device is clearly an improvement over the other two devices described above, it does have some disadvantages. The co-extrusion requires the use of two machines running at the same time extruding two different materials. Additionally, a rubber co-extrusion cannot exert much outward force on the bearing surface of the forward leg.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,563,796, issued to Kettlestrings in 1986, discloses a retainer for sheet material which is formed of resilient memory type material and which has two oppositely acting and opposed legs which provide a gripping action therebetween. Provision is made for one of the legs to act as an indicia carrying surface and a back surface of the retainer can be adapted to be adhesively mounted on a flat surface. Kettlestrings (in the claims) requires an inwardly biased front leg in order to provide gripping force against the rear leg and undesirably requires subsequent manipulation of the legs after molding to position them in a proper gripping position. However, those skilled in the art, upon consideration of FIG. 3 of Kettlestrings, will appreciate that when the extrusion is properly folded, it will assume the configuration shown in FIG. 3 wherein no opening space is provided between biased and abutting gripping points 32a and 42a and, for this and other reasons, Kettlestrings cannot effectively grip thin paper such as newspaper.